Memorymakers by Brian Herbert, Marie Landis

brow, for it was warm here. “Five meters high at its shoulder. Looks kinda like a giant pig, doesn’t it? Or a bear.”
    “They were part of the explosion of mammals after the extinction of dinosaurs,” Thomas said.
    “That’s right,” Nonna said. “Thunder beasts lived after the Cretaceous period, in the Oligocene epoch. Get over here beside this one, children, and I’ll snap your pictures.”
    As Nonna took photographs, she philosophized: “These big mammals pounded all over the country eating each other up, and now they’re gone like their predecessors. What are we left with today? Corporations that eat each other up.” She laughed, a rich and full musical sound.
    “Victoria says you’re a leftover hippie like they used to have a long time ago,” Emily said, staring at the turquoise Indian necklace her grandmother wore.
    A snort erupted from the old woman. “She insults me. I’m too young to have belonged to that period of history. But I write poetry and make my own shoes and I was born in another country. So I’m offbeat in your stepmother’s eyes, I suppose.” Nonna sighed. “I don’t need to impress anyone. It’s a waste of good living time.”
    Nonna might be her father’s mother, but she didn’t look or act like him, Emily decided. Both were tall and oval-faced, but there the resemblance ended. Her father never discussed much with Emily or Thomas.
    Once he had told Emily that she reminded him of her grandmother. “You have a lot of the same qualities,” he’d said with a grin. “A little odd, but very, very . . . special.”
    Emily was flattered.
    The children and their grandparents took a path that led to the forest and found other beasts hidden in the shade, animals that peered around trees and leaves and nestled in the midst of ivy, wild berries and ferns. Saber-toothed tigers known as smilodans, silent and unmoving, inhabited the sweet-smelling wilderness, and Emily saw a creature that looked like a giant armadillo with a lethal barbed ball on the end of its tail. Another hung from a cement ledge and grinned at them with eight-inch teeth. Thomas pulled forth an imaginary sword and defended Emily against imaginary attack.
    “Pow, pow, pow,” he said, flailing at the air like Quixote.
    Emily watched her brother. He had a vivid imagination himself, and his favorite game was called “What If.” What if aliens from another world landed in their backyard? What if you could turn mashed potatoes into ice cream? What if Emily’s Chalk Man was real?
    “Those are all done for,” Thomas shouted, and he ran ahead to join his grandparents, the baby fat jiggling around his waist as he moved.
    On one side of the path, a few meters to the left of Emily, the arched back of another cement thunder beast loomed high in the air. This animal was larger and more menacing than any of the others she had seen.
    Ahead of her, Thomas and the grandparents rounded a corner and disappeared from view. Emily looked behind her, saw no one else on the path. There were noises around her, birds singing and the rustling of leaves, but these sounds grew muted and faraway, like notes of music carried off by the wind. A shiver of fear rippled along Emily’s spine, and she hurried to catch up with her family. According to signs, the path only led in one direction—straight to the exit. When she decided she was safely past the creature that had disturbed her, she slowed her pace and thought how foolish it was to fear something made of cement.
    A surprisingly cold breeze suddenly caught her hair and lifted it, slapping it painfully against her face, The cold became a freezing blast that crept beneath the collar of her dress and chilled her to the core. Emily moved to escape it, but the breeze intensified to a ferocious, howling creature that pummeled her body with fists of ice. Tears of pain filled her eyes, and she attempted to run, but the wind blocked her. A shower of evergreen needles roared across her head,